Include radicals or components information?

[mrjamesriley]

Hello! First off, amazing extension that no doubt has made learning Chinese that little bit easier for so many.

Often I find that I am grabbing Pleco to get more information on characters, particularly their components, to help me better learn a word. Would it be possible to have such information included within this extension?

In Pleco the information is provided via the "Outliers dictionary", but even just being able to show the components (without extra meaning or whether it's a sound component or form etc) would be great.

I'm not familiar with the code of this project, a software engineer and would be happy to assist.

[cschiller]

Hi James, Zhongwen uses the open-source CC-CEDICT as its underlying dictionary. This dictionary doesn't have the component information you're asking for. On the other hand, Outlier doesn't have a free license. I'm not aware of a free dictionary that includes information about components/radicals and I doubt that such a dictionary currently exists. Unfortunately, without it there's no way this information can be shown by Zhongwen. Keep in mind, Zhongwen is free software, and it can only use free dictionary resources with an appropriate license.

Maybe there's an external online dictionary that provides this information. I could then link to it via the Alt-1, Alt-2, ... keyboards shortcuts, just like I'm already doing for LINE Dictionary, Dict.cn, Moe Dict, etc.

[mrjamesriley]

Really appreciate the prompt and detailed response.
Makes total sense, I'll keep an eye out for anything that may help here.
Thanks again for your efforts!